The Sunday morning news. [volume] (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1886-1891, 1887-02-06
A sNIYELING sCAB.

A~--~----% .JrOW6. as Inc
sNIvELING scAB.
party rode down Pavonia avenue to the
ferry and then wheeled into the Monarch
steamship docks. Fat Justice Burton
tipped the little tin British flag that adorn-
ed his cap, with his club, as the patrol
wagon rolled past the gate. The party was
dumped at the entrance to the long freight
depot on the deck.
A HOT DINNER IN TIE COLD.
They marched between piles of sugar sacks
till they found in a clearing an improvised
dining room. A lustrous black stove
pipe rose from monster range and pierced
the roof of the shed. A young woman was
busy at the fire, while two or three cater
ers, with paper caps on their heads, dished
up viands from counters that surrounded
her Walters with their hats and overcoats
on handed the steaming food on plates to
rude tables, with boards for chairs, that
filled the space beyond. 1t was mid
winter picnic in barn for the boys who
atlered to eat it. It was cold as Greenland;
and fingers froze to the table ware whsn
they touched it. The hot refreshments
almost snapped the chilled plates. and the
| frozen cups soon cooled the steaming cot
| fee when it had been poured into them
| from the pit hers. But the boys scarcely
gave
fore they had slowed it away beneath their
buttoned overcoats. The Erie Company fur
nished the repast to those who were en-
gagged in guarding its yards against the
strikers. Till yesterday the specials-the
sparrows, as they are called by the poets
were privileged to eat at the tables; but
then an order went forth that they must
feed themselves or go without, and they
are growing like majors at the interdic-
ton.
THE sCABS AT WORK.
Up the avenue, just beyond the great
freight shed, was another of equal dimen-
sions. The reporter, after his meal had
been eaten, learned that the Italian scabs
who have exercised the anxiety of the
strikers to SO alarming an extent, were en-
gagged in them. All doors were barred, and
the reporter had to go around three sides
of it to the water side to find admission
Sergeant McGinnis with detail were do
ing duty inside. Down the platform be-
meath the shed were thirty or forty italian
workingmen resting, mora than they were
working, upon their hand trucks. They
were all slim built, unhardy and effeminate
looking. Bales of cotton, each weighing a
quarter of ton, waited at their hands to
be rolled down slanteG gang plank to the
deck of the barges that lay at the south
side of che shed. railroad employee
directed them, and an terpreter told
the puny little crowd what he said. It
took six of the Illuminate little fellows to
lift a bale on the truck, and wnen they had
done it they would ali cackle over their
smartness, like barnyard of hens over a
new-laid egg. A whole army of them seized
each bale, when the truck that bore it
reached the head of the gang plank, to
keep il from running down the ungraceful
fellow that drew the skid; and as it went
down further, two others lent their
efforts to hold it back Even with
| this aid the skids nearly crushed the
men who hauled it; and one stiff
kneed old s'scab" was dashed by the weight
behind him with such impetus down the
gang plank that he narrowly escaped being
run by 1t clean across the deck of the boat
and into the water beyond. Every man
that hauled skid down that gang plank
showed on bis countenance that he felt that
death was at the foot ready to snatch him
out from among living and movIdg things.
Across the avenue in the maze of tracks.
amid cars, and lodging drilling freight
cars that sometimes came ON him from un-
expected quarters, the reporter went to
rote what else was to be seen in the be-
seiged district. Captain Newton, he had
been told, had his headquarters within the
yard proper. He met policemen at inter
walls. and specials" and little guard houses
for their comfort, and an old car, off its
wheels, with the legend:
THIRD PRECINCT sUB-srATIoN,
tagged on the door. The rotten floor gave
way beneath his feet as he entered, and
half dozen specials and regulars gathered
around the rusty stove that warmed the
gloomy inside. There he learned that the
big round Captain had posted himself at
the most pretentious freight shed in the
yard. When he reached it, he found bar
rels and boxes on one side of a long plat
form extending to the river, and a train of
freight cars drawn to the other side. The
same understood, hungry looking crowd he
had s. en- at the other dock was here at
work too They were weak aud awkward,
and it took four OF them to do the work of
an ordinary man. Their eyes were turned